Demon

By Kristian S. Fischer

Disclaimers and such:

Copyright: The characters
of Xena: Warrior Princess are owned by MCA/Universal and Renaissance Pictures.
The Highlander Immortality concept is owned by Davis/Panzer Productions. This
piece of fan fiction is in no way intended to infringe on anybody's copyright,
merely written for my own fun, and hopefully the fun of others.

Warnings: There is
some violence in this story. There is one (I hope) somewhat erotic scene in
there, as well as several references to sexual orientations other than heterosexuality.
If you're disturbed by any of this, live in a jurisdiction where anything other
than heterosexuality is illegal, or you're a minor, then the exit's in the exact
same spot as it was at the beginning of my first story. Use it. If you don't,
then consider yourself duly warned. Oh yeah, there's some harsh language as
well.

Thank-you's: I just
want to say a quick thank-you to those of you who took the time to send me feedback
on my last story. It really means everything to us amateur storytellers, y'know.
Also, once again, thanks to Redhawk for answering all my questions.

Chronological Note:
Demon takes place a year before the canon piece of the Infinity Series, Redhawk's
Only One. Thus, you won't find Rickie Gardner in here.

The gunshots echoed off the walls of the warehouse. They came at a slow, steady
pace, one after the other, the .45-caliber bullets turning an unlucky paper
target hanging against one wall to shreds. The shooter was holding the pistol
in one hand, standing perfectly still in a well-practiced firing stance, squeezing
off round after round. She was a tall, black-haired woman, with high, feline
cheekbones and ice-blue eyes protected by a pair of yellow-tinted shooter's
goggles. Her long, shapely legs were sheathed in black jeans, her full breasts
covered by a black t-shirt hanging loose at the waist. A pair of grey sneakers,
a shoulder holster, and a set of ear protectors completed the ensemble.

As the slide of her pistol
clicked on an empty chamber, the woman ejected the spent clip, picked up another
from the table in front of her, inserted it into the weapon and released the
slide, chambering the first round. She then tucked the loaded weapon into the
holster hanging under one armpit, and pushed a button set into the wall next
to her. With the whirr of an electric motor, the practically destroyed target
sailed towards the woman. As it reached her, she appraised it. Apparently satisfied
with her shooting so far, the woman unclipped it and substituted an unmarred
one, soon sending it flying back towards the far wall.

Focusing on the new target
in front of her, she took first one breath, then another. Then, in a single
motion, fluid as water and deadly as fire, she drew the pistol from the holster
and emptied the clip into the target in rapid fire. Laying the empty weapon
down on the table, the shooter once again pushed the button for returning the
target to her. The woman nodded to herself as she looked the target over. Four
rounds had gone into the "head" of the target, the remaining six into
the "chest". Enough for today, Xena G. Amphipolous thought, as she
removed her goggles, and began collecting the spent cartridge cases littering
the table and floor around her. She strode out of the weapons range, intent
for home.

After taking a shower to wash
the scent of cordite off, Xena allowed herself to plop down in one of the high-backed
leather chairs of her living room, ice cold orange juice in one hand, today's
newspaper in the other. "Nothing but bad news, as usual", she thought,
as she perused the headlines. She wasn't disappointed when her gaze fell upon
the second-biggest heading on the front page.

New Child Abduction

Twelve-year
old taken from Portland home

Scanning the article, Xena
felt her anger growing. This was the tenth kid who'd been taken in the past
three months. Some of them had simply disappeared off the streets, here one
moment, gone the other. But this one, and the one before, had been taken right
out of their own homes, stolen in the middle of the night while they slept,
their parents none the wiser.

There is something incredibly
wrong with this picture, Xena thought to herself. The Portland Police Department
weren't a bunch of slack-yawed incompetents, she knew this for a fact. When
she'd talked to her friend Emil Holt about the case, he'd shame-facedly admitted
to her that the department had absolutely nothing to go on. It was as if the
ground itself had simply opened up and swallowed these kids. Holt had also told
her that it wouldn't be long before the FBI would be called in, but that he
quite frankly couldn't see what they'd be able to do. "Unless they send
Mulder and Scully", he'd quipped, and she'd snickered at the reference
to the popular TV show, which she even found herself watching occasionally.

The more she looked at it,
though, the case did look like something out of the X-Files. At least with the
completely inexplicable disappearances of these children. She was pretty sure
that she knew where they were going. Pedophilia and the people who practiced
it were just one of many markets for the more-or-less organized crime of the
Pacific Northwest, and there were definitely people out there who'd pay money
for that kind of service. Abhorrent and disgusting as the thought was to her,
Xena could relate to it on some distant level of her being. To the criminals
who provided, this was just another way to make money off other people's desires.
Maybe it's time to get more personally involved, the dark woman thought
to herself, as she put the paper down.

She'd barely thought this
when her office phone rang. Rising out of the chair, Xena covered the short
distance to her desk at a leisurely pace, and picked up the receiver.

"Hello, Amphipolous Agency."

"Xena? Marianna Finkelbaum
here. Do you remember me?"

Marianna Finkelbaum was a
lawyer working for the city's biggest lawfirm. Xena had met her six months earlier,
when Marianna had been the go-between between the dark woman and some wealthy
client who'd wished to employ an investigator. Xena could appreciate the need
for discretion and anonymity on the part of her client, even if having to go
through Marianna to get every bit of information she needed from her client
had gotten a bit tiresome. Still, she'd solved the case very neatly, coming
away with a healthy payoff as well as a significant boost to her reputation
as a private and discreet investigator.

"I'll be able to explain
better if we meet, but I can tell you that you'll be working for some people
who are very personally concerned about the disappearing children."

Xena's ear perked up at this.
Interesting coincidence, she thought. "In that case, I'm very interested.
When can we meet?"

"I have some paperwork
to take care of, but I'll be free in about an hour. Where?"

Xena glanced at her wristwatch.
That would make it just after 1 PM. "Tell you what, it's a nice day out.
Why don't you meet me at the Arboretum? The picnic area just off the road?"

"Sounds like a plan",
Marianna replied, "I'll see you in an hour."

"'Til then."

It was indeed a nice day out. The sun was shining in a spectacularly blue sky,
having to share it with only a few scattered white clouds, and there was a light
breeze to stir the air and keep it from being too hot. It was mid-June, and
Portland was showing itself from its nice side as Xena drove through the light
afternoon traffic headed for the Arboretum. She liked the place a lot, especially
on days like this one. At this time in the afternoon, it would probably be crammed
with people, out enjoying the weather and whatever else. Xena felt her mouth
settle into one of her half-smiles. Even if she was going there on business,
she would be enjoying herself too. A very large part of the reason for this
was the woman she was going to meet.

When Xena had first met Marianna
Finkelbaum six months ago, she had immediately liked what she saw. Marianna
was a petite woman, maybe five foot five, with a very well-proportioned and
toned body, obviously the result of hours at the gym. She had shoulder-length
black hair, usually worn in some intricate braiding, and dark brown eyes that
betrayed a mind sharper than any razor. Then she'd said, "Hello, Miss Amphipolous.
Pleased to meet you", and Xena had been forced to catch her breath. That
voice... Marianna's voice... It was the audio equivalent of dark, golden honey,
dripping off the end of a knife, catching the light and gleaming. The part of
her brain capable of rational thought had chided her for reacting like this
after 2,000 years of seeing and hearing all sorts of things all around the world,
but then the rest of her mind had jumped on the rational part, and bound and
gagged it in the corner. The spell had not been broken when she'd shaken Marianna's
hand, a firm and warm handshake, and she'd barely been able to say, "please...
call me Xena".

Xena shook her head as she
pulled into the parking area. Despite having to pay attention to the case, she'd
flirted for all she was worth with the lawyer, and while she was reasonably
certain that Marianna had appreciated the attention, it hadn't worked worth
a damn. It wasn't that she was married or particularly chaste, Xena was sure
of that, it was that she was just as vehemently heterosexual as Xena herself
was homosexual. That had become clear towards the end of the case, and Xena
had, very reluctantly, let it go. That didn't mean, of course, that she wouldn't
enjoy Marianna's company on this warm summer's day in the Arboretum. Just
try and stop me, she mused as she walked into the Arboretum.

The place was, as Xena had
expected, full of people, but it didn't take very long for the dark woman to
spot who she was looking for. Marianna was sitting on a bench by a tree just
outside the covered picnic area. The lawyer was wearing a light blue skirt suit,
but had taken the jacket off, revealing a sleeveless white blouse and beautifully
tanned, well-toned arms. Her hair was in one of those braids again, and wrap-around
sunglasses covered her eyes. She was working on her laptop computer, briefcase
standing next to her on the bench, and hadn't seen Xena yet. Xena allowed herself
to hang back for a moment or too, letting her eyes wander a bit over the figure,
pondering the might-have-beens to herself. Get a grip, lady! She's not interested,
her rational mind declared. She grinned to herself. If you don't shut up,
she told her rational mind sternly, I'll sic my libido on you. And you don't
want that, do you?. Then the dark woman shook her head. It was true. She
had to get a grip, Marianna wasn't interested, and there was work to be done.

The lawyer looked up as Xena's
shadow fell across her. The tall, raven-haired private investigator was wearing
a pair of somewhat faded blue jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a black vest. Damn,
Marianna thought, as she set aside her laptop, and got to her feet, setting
her best smile on her face. "Xena! It's good to see you again."

"Right back at you, Marianna",
Xena answered, clasping the lawyer's hand firmly and smiling back at her.

"You wanna take a walk?",
the investigator continued, as she released Marianna's hand, with some reluctance.

"Yeah, sure. Let me just
pack up here..." Marianna quickly shut down her laptop, shoved into her
briefcase, and pulled on her jacket.

A very large part of Xena
was sorry to see that white-clad torso disappearing inside the blue suit jacket,
but she had to admit that Marianna wore it well. As the smaller woman turned
to her, ready to go, Xena reached out a hand and brushed away a small fleck
of dirt on one sleeve. "Picked up some dirt from the bench there",
she commented, at Marianna's only minutely changed facial expression. "C'mon".

The two women walked side
by side along first one path, then another, then a third, talking about lighter
things, and enjoying the peace the Arboretum provided. In among all the living
things, it was very easy to forget that this was the middle of a city. The place
wasn't as filled with people once you got away from the entry area, and they
eventually found a bench to sit on where they could have some privacy and enjoy
the sun at the same time.

"So", Xena said,
as they got settled, "what have you got?"

"Well", Marianna
began, "as I said on the phone, it concerns the missing kids. I know you've
been following the whole slew of kidnappings here in Portland, but are you aware
that there's been a similar series of kidnappings up in Seattle?"

"No", Xena conceded,
"I wasn't. So where's the connection to us sitting here?"

"The connection is that
Seattle is where your paycheck will be coming from. You'll be working for two
sets of parents, very wealthy parents, who had their children taken two and
three weeks ago, respectively, and who are unsatisfied with the way the Seattle
PD are handling the situation." She paused. "Our office was approached
yesterday by another law firm up in Seattle, and they asked specifically for
you."

Two dark eyebrows rose in
unison at this. "Excuse me, what did you just say?"

"You heard me",
Marianna chuckled, "this high-powered corp lawyer came into my office,
and told me his clients had asked him to find you. Guess they still remember
the case of the late mayor, Gould, huh?"

"Yeah, guess so",
Xena replied. The Gould case had been her second case after she'd gotten her
license, and her first really major one. Michael Gould had been mayor of Seattle
while Xena was first settling down in Portland, and some influential people
in Washington state had been suspecting him of close links with organized crime.
Those people had happened to mention their need for some discreet investigations
into the matter to one of Xena's friends, and he had sent it her way. By the
time it was over, the suspicions had been validated, Gould was under official
investigation, and Xena had been complimenting herself on how discreetly she'd
handled the whole thing. It had been better that way, considering that her Oregon
P.I. license didn't empower her to ply her trade in Washington. Now she was
wondering if she'd really been discreet enough, and she didn't particularly
like thinking about that.

"Judging by your facial
expression, you're no longer sure that you want this case", Marianna observed.

"Well", Xena began,
"I just don't like the thought of a lot of people knowing who I am and
what I've done. I kinda like my privacy, y'know? But to answer you properly,
no, I'll take it. I was going to look into it in my own time, but now that someone's
willing to pay me to do so, so much the better", she concluded, with a
little smile.

Marianna answered her smile
with one of her own, exposing gleaming white teeth. "I was hoping you'd
react that way, Xena. In fact, I already told Mr. Corp-Lawyer that you'd take
the case."

Another raised eyebrow, "Someone
else might have considered that a bit premature, Marianna", the dark woman
said, but keeping her tone light.

"I know, I know",
the lawyer replied, "but I figured I knew you well enough to know that
this would be just up your alley. Was I wrong?"

"No", Xena admitted,
and gave her a little grin. "So, you have any material for me?"

"Yup", the lawyer
replied, and opened her briefcase, pulling out a plain folder. "This includes
files on the two rich kids who got taken in Seattle, as well as some stuff I
got a friend of mine in the SPD to fax me." She paused, "it's kinda
weird, Xena. It's like those kids just disappeared into the ground. Just like
here. Whoever's doing this is damn good".

"Yeah", the investigator
replied, looking up from the first picture in the folder, one showing a pretty
girl of maybe nine years of age, "Anything else?".

"Oh yeah! I almost forgot",
the lawyer grinned, and reached into her briefcase again. She handed a check
to the woman sitting beside her on the bench, "Your advance."

Xena read the figure on the
little piece of paper, and whistled softly. "That's some advance",
the dark woman said.

"I'll say. So... you
got any idea where to start with this?", she asked.

"As a matter of fact
I do", Xena replied, grinning.

"Do I want to know?",
the lawyer asked.

"Probably not."

In the darkness of her bedroom, Xena lay staring at the ceiling. The only sound
in the room was that of the AC humming, and very rarely she picked up the noise
of a bus going by outside. It was shortly after midnight, and Xena had put herself
to bed at this, for her, relatively early hour, because she had to get up early
in the morning. She'd told Marianna that she had an idea of how to start the
investigation, and that involved driving to Seattle. For now, though, she was
alone in her bed. No, not alone, she corrected herself. There was something
there with her. It had been her meeting with Marianna that had triggered it,
but now it was about to take off in an entirely different direction.

To say that Xena had been
chaste during the centuries after the death of her beloved Gabrielle would have
been as idiotic as it would have been untruthful. Despite her Immortality and
her occasional desires to be free of it, Xena liked life too much to deny herself
its pleasures, and sex was one of the pleasures she enjoyed the most. There
had been scores of encounters up through the years, the vast majority of them
simple one-night stands, fulfilling a physical need. A very few had been more
than that, but none had ever approached the level of love she had felt for,
and received from, the Poteidaean bard. While she had occasionally told herself
that Gabrielle might have been happy for her to begin to love again, Xena herself
could not even begin to imagine feeling about anybody else the way she'd felt
about Gabrielle.

She let her mind wander. It
was always like this. When there was no partner to hand, Xena was very good
at pleasing herself, and her memories supported this extremely well. She just
had to close her eyes and let go, and they would provide. She could entertain
regular fantasies as well as the next person, but her own stock of memories
was so large and varied... Especially this one... Oh yes...

They had made camp in a grove of trees overlooking the Aegean. Xena and
Gabrielle had just completed a quest for one of Artemis's temples, retrieving
a stolen religious artifact from some extremely nasty people. The fight had
been bad, and Xena considered that she and Gabrielle had been lucky to escape
unharmed. Especially Gabrielle, she thought. The bard had come into the fight
at a critical moment, exposing herself to what Xena felt was unnecessary danger
to safeguard the warrior's back. Now they were here, and Xena felt she had
to point this out to her companion.
Gabrielle had only just gotten the fire going when Xena had launched into
what the warrior had later considered a very nasty tirade. She had gotten
to the third sentence along the line of "you shouldn't expose yourself
to danger like that" when the bard had gotten up, turned around, and
walked a few paces away from the fire. Xena had known instantly she'd gone
too far. As she began to extract her foot from her mouth, and tried to come
up with an apology, she'd seen the bard's shoulders begin to shudder with
what she thought was anger.

As she'd begun to stammer
out a plea for forgiveness, Gabrielle had whirled around, and by the firelight,
Xena could see that her green eyes were blazing with what she took to be fury.
Xena had begun to rise when Gabrielle suddenly hurled herself forward and
tackled the warrior. It had been the first and only time Xena had ever been
taken down like that by the bard, but her beginning protests were instantly
silenced by Gabrielle by the simple expedient of putting her mouth over Xena's.
The warrior had thought her eyes would pop out of their sockets, so widely
had they been opened. The kiss seemed to last an eternity.

The bard finally pulled
back, and as Xena fumbled for the words to react to what had happened, Gabrielle
stopped her again with three little words of her own.

"Let it happen".

Just like that. Every
single wall and barrier that Xena had erected around her heart, and which
had been slowly crumbling since the day she'd met Gabrielle, now simply disappeared
as if they'd never been. It really had been that simple. Her heart and soul
lay bare and exposed before her bard, and as the kiss was renewed, she felt
two warm, gentle hands reaching into her, taking a hold of her whole being,
a hold of her bruised and battered heart, and holding gently onto it.

In a Portland bedroom, a figure moved in the blissful state between sleep and
wakefulness. Hands started to move in conjunction with other hands of so long
ago, pulling aside sheets, sliding under fabric...

Just before every rational thought process in her mind ceased, Xena thought
that although Gabrielle was obviously inexperienced, her bardly creativity
shone cleanly through her somewhat clumsy attempts to remove Xena's clothes
as well as her own while still remaining as closely together as they were.
Ripples of pleasure spread out through the warrior's whole body, like ripples
spreading out through water that someone had dropped a stone in, except that
the "stones" were warm caresses of fingers, lips and tongue, and
the medium the ripples travelled through was her flesh and blood, the love
she'd felt for Gabrielle since the day she'd met her, the love that was now
about to come to a most passionate consummation.

In Portland, hands that no
longer belonged to the occupant of the bed moved across a bronzed, supple body,
finding all the little points of pleasure on the skin, squeezing, pinching,
caressing... Ethereal lips and tongue probed and nibbled over delicate and sensitive
earlobes, lingered over a pulse that was rapidly gaining pace. Xena felt her
body being taken away from the world, as she was sure she felt the gentle pressure
of a lithe form on top of her. The hands were everywhere, but they were moving
in a generally downward direction. She felt them sliding from her breasts down
across her abdomen, over her hips, the inside of the thighs...

"Please, Gabrielle...",
she moaned.

In response to her plea, she felt a very light, possibly hesitant touch
on her center. It almost sent her spiralling off into space, but only almost,
and she was brought back to the present when the touch returned, more confident
this time. Fingers, lips and tongue danced across her arousal, pulling her
further and further upwards. Then, when she almost thought it too much, two
slender fingers were pushed inside her. She felt her body arching under that
touch, heard little yelps becoming load moans and gasps, and then becoming
screams of pleasure. On and on it went, pulling her with it further and further
towards the point of exquisite release. She reached it with one final drawn-out
scream, feeling herself falling down, down, down to land safely in loving
arms.

In a bedroom in Portland,
Xena opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She was soaked in sweat, out
of breath and very happy. "Thank you, Gabrielle", she murmured and
closed her eyes again, sinking quickly into blissful sleep.

Just before it claimed her,
she thought she heard from far, far away, "Good night, warrior mine".

The black Mustang ate up the miles of Interstate 5 North with abandon. It was
the next day, and Xena was driving to Seattle to begin her investigation. She
didn't have any direct leads to go on, but that wasn't an immediate problem.
She knew who to ask, if only she could locate him, and that hadn't been that
big of a problem the last time.

Before she'd left Portland,
she'd called up Emil Holt:

"Holt."

"It's me. How's
it going?"

"You have to ask?
Things are cruddy in the extreme, Xe. The Feds got here this morning, and
they're turning the place upside down and inside out."

"Classic mode? 'We're
from the Government, and we're here to help you, whether you want it or not'
?"

"Something like
that", he chuckled, "but hey, if they can do anything with this,
then they can be my guests".

"Yeah..."

"Are you getting
involved?"

"Why do you ask
that, Holt?"

"Because I know
you. A case like this you'd probably do pro bono."

"Yeah. But it just
so happens that somebody is willing to pay me to look into this, so..."

Holt sat at his desk
for a moment after replacing the receiver. He knew his friend well enough
to know that she had some pretty shifty and nasty sources of information,
so there was actually a fair chance that she'd be able to do something. And...
she is who she is, Holt mused, as he fingered a faded tatoo on his arm. There
were some kidnappers out there who were about to get a very nasty shock to
the system.

Xena kicked the door to her motel room shut with her foot, plopped her overnight
bag down on the bed, and sat down next to it. She had several hours to spend
before going out to find the first of two people she had to see that day, and
one little errand she had to run first, but apart from that, the day was her
own. Maybe she'd find a library, and look at what articles she could find about
the kidnappings here in Seattle. Didn't sound like a bad plan... maybe get some
lunch, and a park to enjoy it in.

Curtis LaRue left his favorite bar, The Black Lily, at a little after 11PM.
He was a tall, handsome-looking black man, wearing a happy grin and clothes
that were probably a little too snazzy for this place, deep in the dark bowels
of Seattle. Still, what was the point of being in the employ of one of the most
influential figures in the city's underworld, if you couldn't dress the part?
He'd just finished a very profitable evening of doing his own little side deals
in illicit substances, which was the reason for the grin on his face. He was,
he figured, a lucky man to have it so good.

That feeling, along with the
alcohol in his system, drained completely out of him when he saw the car that
was sitting at the curb just a few feet away. It was a black Ford Mustang ragtop
that he knew only too damn well. Leaning against the hood of the car, her arms
folded across her chest, the light from the street lamps seemingly absorbed
by her black clothing, was a woman he'd prayed he'd never ever see again.

"Hello Curtis",
Xena said, "is it gonna be the same as always?"

She'd barely finished the
sentence when LaRue took off down the street, running for all he was worth.

"Guess so", she
muttered, rolled her eyes, and ran after him.

It's always the same with
LaRue, Xena thought, as she bounded after him, her long legs eating up the
distance at a, for her, almost leisurely pace. The poor man was so scared of
her, he always ran away when she came to talk to him. Of course, with the way
she'd treated him the first time she'd needed information from him, it was sort
of understandable. The old neck pinch always makes people very, very frightened,
she mused, as she kept her quarry in sight. He was running pell-mell down the
pretty much empty sidewalk, not looking where he was going, concentrating more
on what, or rather who, he was going away from.

It was a discarded pizza container
that did it for him this time. He came up to an alley, tried to duck into it,
slipped on the damp cardboard, and practically flew through the air, his momentum
carrying him forward to slam hard into a brick wall. Shaking her head, Xena
ran up to him, looked quickly up and down the street, then grabbed him by the
collar and pulled him into the shadows.

Curtis LaRue woke up to a
world of utter pain. He was sitting between two garbage cans in a dark alley,
his legs, back and head screaming at him. As he lifted his chin slowly from
his chest, he saw the shadow looming over him. Here, in the darkness, away from
the street, she seemed a living, breathing slice of the night.

"Because", he began,
surprised to find his normally rich voice raspy and hoarse, "because one
day I might get away...". He knew it was a lie. She wasn't even breathing
hard, and he thought his heart was going to burst with a combination of fear
and exhaustion.

"The boss?!? Are you
fucking nuts? I can't give you the boss. He'll kill me!"

"You know", the
dark woman said, her voice conversational, "some people have called me
'fucking nuts'. They usually think they're out of my earshot when they do so."
She smiled at him. It was the kind of smile you usually found a couple of feet
forward of and below a fin coming rapidly towards you through the water. "And
as for him killing you", she continued, leaning down over him, her
smile gleaming in the night, "if you don't tell me where I can find him,
then you'll never have to worry about him or anything else again."

She meant it. LaRue was sure
of it. The night air carried her scent to his nostrils as he sat there between
the stinking garbage cans. Leather, denim, perfume, death... He rambled off
an address.

"Thank you", Xena
purred. "And try not to worry too much. I won't tell Albert about our little
meeting." With this, she turned and walked away from him. At the mouth
of the alley, the dark woman turned around and called back to him, "Oh,
and Curtis? You should do something about that bladder control problem of yours."

LaRue looked down himself
and groaned.

Albert Faulkner, also known as The Ghost, was a fixture in the Seattle underworld.
It was said that he not only knew everything that went on in the city, but also
knew everything that was going to be happening. This information he sold to
everyone who wanted to buy it. All the criminals who could afford his services
were eager to purchase them, and that was one of the reasons why he'd stayed
alive in an environment that could very easily have killed him a long time ago.
Another reason was that no one outside his own organization was certain how
to find him. He was almost never seen or heard and his clients dealt with his
underlings, never with him personally. He had survived and made a very healthy
living off being equally useful to everybody.

Now the lamp above the headboard
of his bed was flipped on.

Faulkner always prided himself
on how lightly he slept, and the light shining on his face quickly brought him
to wakefulness. Adjusting to his surroundings, he saw the shadow standing a
few feet away, just outside the circle of light.

"Who the...", his
brain kicked in, "You!".

"Me", Xena confirmed,
and took a step forward, letting him see her properly, "Good evening, Albert".
She saw him wince at this. Xena knew that the man before her hated hearing his
given name spoken aloud, being much more comfortable with the nickname his criminal
activities had gotten him. He was called The Ghost because of the way he always
seemed to slip away just when someone thought they'd cornered him. Xena felt
that the moniker was probably more due to the man's complexion, which reminded
her of something that had lived, and then subsequently died under a stone.

"You know", she
began, "your security really, REALLY sucks, Albert. It was too easy to
get in here."

"Aw, Xena", he replied,
"you didn't break any of my obviously overpaid bodyguards on the way, did
you?"

"Nah", she answered
with a half-grin, "I figured you'd want to do that yourself."

That got a grin from the man
in the bed. "Right as ever, Xena. Do you mind of I get out of bed? If we're
gonna be conducting business, I don't want to do it from here. I'm assuming
this is a business call?"

She nodded. "Please.
Just don't do anything untoward."

He gave her a Who-Me? look
and got out of the bed, putting on a burgundy dressing gown. Albert Faulkner
was in his early thirties, of medium height, with a build that in two words
could be described as 'delicate' and 'feminine'. Turning to face her, he asked,
"So what's important enough to drag me out of my bed at... 1:30AM! Xena!"

She grinned at him. "Everything
you can tell me about the disappearing kids."

He nodded. "What's it
worth to you?"

"The contents of the
bag on your desk", the dark woman replied, "I think you'll like what's
in it."

Looking past his visitor,
Faulkner noticed the paper bag sitting on the desk for the first time. He was
pretty sure he could make out the word 'Macy's' on it. He took a step forward.

"Ah ah ah, Albert. No
peeking until you've told me what I need to hear".

Sigh. "It's always the
same with you, Xena. You expect me to provide for you without knowing what it'll
get me."

"Albert, you're hurting
my feelings. Have I ever disappointed you with my gifts for you?"

He had to admit she hadn't.
Another sigh.

"Okay, you win. It's
the Russians. They are basically running a slaving ring both here and down in
Oregon. Their snatch squads are very, very good, as you and a lot of law enforcement
officials have found out by now. They sell them off to brothels in the Far East,
taking them by container ship across the Pacific." He paused briefly. "It's
a new business they've set up. It didn't start until about four months ago,
when the Russian Mob here in Seattle got a new boss, a man named Oleg Kalyugin.
He runs a legit import-export business down on the docks, and that's where they
operate their little slavery business out of."

"Address?", the
voice was curt, all business.

He gave it to her. "You
need to be careful with these people, Xena. They're a violent bunch. They make
a lot of money off other people's lust for kiddies, and they've already killed
people for trying to stop them."

"Yeah well, I'm a violent
bunch too", the dark woman replied, "Don't worry your little head,
Albert." With those words, she turned and walked to the door. "Go
open your gift. And good night... Ghost". And then she slipped away.

Faulkner briefly considered
hitting the alarm button underneath his desk, but then discarded the thought.
Instead he went over to his desk, switched the light on, and opened the bag,
which indeed turned out to be from Macy's. Withdrawing the box from inside the
bag, he quickly opened it, and pulled out what was probably the most beautiful
black cocktail dress he'd ever seen.

"Oh Xena, you shouldn't
have...", he mumbled, holding the dress up in front of himself and studying
his reflection in the full-length mirror. He had just the shoes to go with it,
too...

The Seattle docks were never really quiet. Even now, at half past two in the
morning, people were working in the warehouses and on the ships, under the glaring
arc lights, moving cargo back and forth.

Xena stood in the shadows
of one such warehouse, watching the happenings at another one, a hundred yards
away. A freighter was tied to the dockside outside it, and men were busy loading
it with the help of the ship's onboard crane. She could see some twenty figures
moving back and forth on the dockside.

Long odds, she thought
to herself, but not the longest I've ever had to face.

She performed a last check
on her equipment, checking the clip of her pistol, the two spares, the knife
she kept hidden well away in her soft-soled 'Sneaky' boots, and the Mag-Lite
of the kind big enough to be used as a club if she needed it. Everything was
in order. Now there only remained to decide where to go first. She could see
several ways of getting aboard the freighter and inside the warehouse, and her
plan was to check the two locations out, see if she could find any of the children,
and if she did, retreat and make an anonymous phone call to the Seattle PD.
Let them clean this mess up, she thought. If it looked like the freighter
was going to sail, then she'd have to find a way of stopping it from doing so.

But where to go first? As
she stood there, debating with herself, an image of ancient times flashed across
her mind's eye. With a grin, she stuck her hand in her pocket, pulling out a
coin. Heads, the freighter. Tails, the warehouse. Then she flipped the
coin into the air, caught it expertly as it was coming down, and slapped it
down on the back of her hand. Heads it is, she thought and began moving towards
the ship.

Crossing the dock out of sight
of any of the men working on and alongside the freighter, Xena quickly ran up
to the ship, keeping inside the shadows. Five minutes, and a careful climb up
one of the mooring lines later, the dark woman found herself crouching on the
deck of the rather battered, old freighter, hiding behind some crates. Now to
get inside the ship.

Creeping slowly from hiding
place to hiding place, Xena made it up to a hatch in the superstructure, and
after taking a last look around, she quickly opened the hatch, stepped into
the poorly lit interior of the ship, and shut the hatch behind her. The inside
of the ship, stuffy as it was, smelled of a mixture of diesel oil, sweat and
old meals. Not overpoweringly so, but enough for it to be unpleasant. Xena filtered
out the smell and proceeded cautiously forward. If the kids were here, where
would they keep them? Probably downstairs, she thought, down in or near the
bilges. She looked around, and spotted a ladder leading down into the bowels
of the ship. She carefully crept down it.

It was when she tried to go
down the next ladder to the deck below, that Xena ran into her first problem.
As she put her booted foot on the top of the ladder, a bearded sailor came into
view at the bottom of it. He stared at the beautiful, black-clad woman at the
top of the steps for two long seconds, his face a picture of utter confusion.
He should have used the time to cry out, raise the alarm, do something other
than just standing around, but he never got the chance. Xena threw herself downward,
through the narrow space of air above the ladder, her kick catching the man
squarely on the chin. He staggered backward, his eyes spinning in two different
directions, and hit the deck. The way the sailor's head bounced on impact told
Xena that he'd be unconscious for a good while, and that he'd wake up with the
mother of all headaches, if he ever woke up.

She looked around quickly.
The noise of the man hitting the deck had been very loud, and it was only a
question of time before somebody came to investigate. Xena spotted a hatch standing
open across the corridor and, peeking inside, found a storeroom. Grabbing the
sailor under the arms, she hauled him inside the room and closed the hatch behind
her. Looking quickly around the small room for a place to hide the thoroughly
unconscious sailor, her eyes noticed an object on a shelf. She picked it up.
Plastic handcuffs, Xena mused, this ship either has a lot of discipline
problems, or else... She cut off the train of thought there. It didn't really
matter why the bundle of maybe fifteen police-issue plastic 'cuffs was there;
she could use them. She pulled off one of the plastic strips before stuffing
the rest in her pocket, and tied the man's hands together. Then she tore off
a strip of his shirt, and used it to tie in place his cap, which she'd used
to gag him. Finally, she pulled him as far back as she could from the door,
and hid him behind some crates.

Listening at the hatch to
make sure no one was on the other side, Xena quietly opened it, and slipped
out of the storeroom. As far as she could tell, there was only one more deck
below this one, and she planned to search through the ship working her way up
from the bottom. She also knew that she had to hurry now. No matter how well
she'd hidden that sailor, and that hadn't been very well considering what she
would have liked to do, he would eventually be found, and she would like to
be out of there before then. Sliding like a shadow across the deck, Xena approached
the last ladder, and quietly descended it.

Down here, the smell of diesel
oil overpowered the other two smells that had warred with it on the upper decks.
Xena could hear the thrum of the engine room, the ship running one of
her, from the sound of it, poorly maintained diesel engines to provide power
for the vessel. Now she had to get to work.

Stealthily traversing the
deck, the dark woman searched every compartment she could find, avoiding contact
with the few crewmembers she encountered. Finding nothing, she eventually slipped
through a hatch into what, from the size of it, was probably the main cargo
hold. Eight standard 21-foot cargo containers were sitting in the middle of
the floor. There were a few crates scattered around the corners of the cavernous
room, but otherwise the hold was dark and empty. The big roof hatches were closed,
the loading process obviously finished.

Switching on her light, Xena
entered the hold, peering into the corners for any sign of other occupants.
Finding none, she carefully approached the containers. They were each sealed
with a US Customs seal, and adorned with Cyrillic letters declaring them the
property of the Kalyugin Import/Export Company. Import/Export, my ass...,
Xena growled inwardly, as she drew her knife, and cut the seal on the first
container.

As she opened the door, an
evil stench assailed her nostrils. She had smelled this particular stink many
times before: it was a mixture of urine, human fecal matter, vomit, and above
all, mind-numbing terror. The beam from her Mag-Lite fell on a dozen small,
frightened faces, all huddling as far back inside the container as they could.
They were dirty, dishevelled and scared out of their minds. Goddess, no...,
Xena whimpered inside as she made to enter the container, her attention fully
on the frigthened children in front of her, her mouth beginning to form low,
soothing words.

"DON'T MOVE, BITCH!!!",
the shouted command came from behind, making her whirl around. Two men, both
carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, stood some 15 feet away from her, the muzzles
of their weapons pointing right at her.

She slowly raised her hands,
cursing herself for not having heard their approach. Can't make a move now,
she thought. If they shoot, some of the children might get hit.

"On your knees, hands
behind your head... NOW!", the commands continued, coming from the bigger
of the two men in front of her, the other one pointing his rifle, with its attached
flashlight, straight at her face. She slowly complied.

Captain Victor Starukhin was not a happy man. The night had started off well
enough, his men completing the loading of the ship in record time, so they could
be ready to sail at dawn. And now this.

The dark woman sitting on
the little stool in the next compartment had been completely uncooperative.
She had shown no reaction to his shouted questions, hadn't even flinched when
he'd struck her across the face. She'd carried no identification papers, nothing
that could tell him who she was, or who she worked for. He turned to his First
Mate, who was standing next to him.

"What do you think, Pyotr
Aleksandrovich?"

"She probably isn't a
cop. They don't work alone like this. Maybe FBI?"

"Unlikely. We'd have
them all over us by now if she was."

"Private Investigator?"

"That's a possibility.
Hired by some parents unsatisfied with the progress of the police in this matter,
perhaps."

"Da", the
First Mate replied, and then continued, "What are we going to do with her,
Captain? We can't let her go, she's seen too much".

"I know", Starukhin
commented quietly.

"Maybe some entertainment
for the crew on the voyage across the Pacific?", the Mate asked, his tone
making it very clear what type of 'entertainment' he had in mind.

"You're always thinking
with your dick, Pyotr. Have you taken a look at her? I have, and I somehow think
that even if all the rest of us held her down while one of us fucked her, she'd
still get loose and kill us all." He paused. "No, she has to die...
now. Go find me a plastic bag to put the corpse in, and some weights to make
it sink to the bottom. We'll throw her over the side with a couple of bullets
in her, and that'll be that".

"Yes, Captain",
the First Mate replied, and went to carry out his orders.

Xena raised her head defiantly as the Russian captain came back into the little
compartment.

"Give me her pistol",
he said in Russian to one of her guards, who promptly handed over the Colt.
He worked the slide, and turned to her.

"This is nothing personal",
he said to her in English, as he raised the weapon.

"Liar", she replied.

This got maybe half a raised
eyebrow, and then he shot her twice in the chest at point-blank range. She was
dead before her body, carried off the stool by the force of the impacts, landed
on the deck.

Xena awoke to darkness and cold. It took her several moments to realize that
she was inside a black plastic bag, and that cold, foul-smelling water was coming
in, soaking her. She was lying on several hard objects. Weights to make sure
the corpse doesn't come to the surface. Her face became hard in the darkness,
Sorry to disappoint you, boys, but this corpse is about to come back to haunt
you. With that thought, she jabbed her fingers upward, through the black
plastic. Ignoring the water now pouring in, she rapidly enlarged the opening,
and was soon able to free herself from the bag. A few powerful strokes of her
legs carried her to the surface of the stinking harbor.

Taking a few moments to get
her bearings, Xena saw that she'd come up basically next to the Russian ship.
Just dump her over the side, huh?, the dark woman mused as she swam around
the ship, Bad move. I was going to call the police to come and get
you, but now I think I'll just deal with you myself.. This thought brought
a gleaming, wolfish smile to her face as she pulled herself out of the harbor,
and into the shadows.

Sasha Petrovitch was the youngest member of the crew, and just about to go on
duty. He didn't much like being in America, and found himself missing his admittedly
somewhat squalid apartment back home in Vladivostok, missing his girlfriend.
Elena..., he mused. It had been months. The rest of the crew were always teasing
him about his Elena, because he never stopped talking about her. As he opened
the hatch to the compartment he shared with two others, both of them now on
duty, Sasha noticed that the rotten smell of the harbor seemed to have gotten
stronger. Then he took the first step outside his compartment. The next thing
he felt was a hand, cold as ice and hard as steel, gripping him around the back
of the neck. Before he could react, the hand propelled him forward straight
into the bulkhead. His world seemed to explode in pain, and then everything
went black.

Vassily Kropotkin was the
chief engineer on the ship, and on the way back to his cabin when he heard the
clanging noise of something large impacting with the bulkhead not far away.
Walking up to investigate, he found the unmoving form on the deck, blood rapidly
pooling under the head.

"Sasha?", he began,
as he squatted down to look further. Rolling the young man over, he saw that
Sasha's whole face was covered in blood. "What the hell happened to you,
you young idiot?", he mouthed. Then something wet fell on the top of his
bald head. He looked up just in time to see the dark shadow descending rapidly
on him.

Quickly disposing of the two
comatose Russians, Xena continued her prowl around the ship. Her next stop was
at the hatch of what turned out to be the compartment of four sleeping sailors.
Wonder if I can take them all down before they wake up?, she mused, as
she looked the sleeping men over. Only one way to find out, she thought,
and slipped inside the compartment.

Aleksandr Narayev had been
given the task of mopping up the blood on the floor of the compartment where
the captain had killed the intruder. The fact that there had been a killing
here meant nothing to the man, it was merely tedious labor. He had just emptied
the bucket of bloody water over the side, and put his cleaning tools away, when
a voice from behind him said, "Hey! You!". Turning around, the only
thing he saw was a shadowy form and a fist closing very rapidly on his face.

Captain Starukhin was in his
cabin, doing some paperwork, when there was a knock on the hatch. Not looking
up, he yelled, "Enter!"

As his pencil continued to
scratch Cyrillic characters across the paper, he heard the hatch open behind
him, heard the footfalls of someone coming into the cabin, and then the hatch
closed again. That could only be the First Mate; no one else would dare to just
walk in unbidden. Setting down the last sentence, he asked, "What is it,
Pyotr Aleksandrovich?", and turned around.

"I'm sorry, captain,",
a menacing, low voice growled in Russian, "but Pyotr Aleksandrovich couldn't
make it here tonight. You'll have to make do with me."

The figure that was standing
in front of him was something out of his deepest nightmares. It was dark, dripping
wet, hair a mess, shirt torn and ripped by two bullet holes, and it reeked of
the rot and decay of Hell itself. The only points of light were the eyes, and
they're were as cold as the Siberian winter.

Starukhin felt his mind shutting
down under the stress of what his eyes had told it. He fumbled on instinct alone
for the pistol in his pocket, the one he'd taken earlier tonight. The weapon
whose owner had now come back...

Xena reached out and plucked
the pistol out of the man's nerveless hands, stuffing it into her waistband.

"Who... who are you?",
the captain mumbled incoherently.

"Why captain", she
purred, "have you already forgotten that?". Then her hand shot out
with the speed of a striking snake, and gripped him around the throat in a vise-like
grip. "I'm the bitch you murdered earlier tonight", she declared,
her voice now ice-cold, "don't you remember? The murder that wasn't anything
personal". With those words, she began to lift him off the deck in one
hand.

"By rights, I should
kill you right here and now. But I made a promise to someone a long time ago
that I wouldn't kill over things that didn't require it. And the little matter
of you killing me... well, it just doesn't warrant me sullying my hands with
your blood."

Starukhin looked as if his
head was about ready to explode, but Xena didn't release her grip.

"So here's what you're
going to do for me, now that I'm going to spare your life. The police will arrive
here very shortly, and when they do, you will answer all their questions. You
will give up all of your organization here in America. Everything, you understand?"
She pulled the choking Russian down to close to her face, ignoring his foul
breath, and continued, "If you do not, if you're foolish enough to fear
the wrath of the people you work for more than you fear me now, then I will
find out about it. And I will come and find you. And believe me, I will make
you wish I'd killed you here tonight." With these words, Xena flung Starukhin
clean across the small compartment, sending him crashing into the bulkhead.
Looking down at her stricken foe, the dark woman thought with a grin, Guess
Curtis isn't the only bad guy around Seattle with a bladder control problem...

It was early morning, but in one Seattle motel room the blinds were drawn tightly.
Inside the darkened room, a figure reclined in a chair in front of the TV, tuned
to a local station.

"... and now back to
this morning's top story. Acting on an anonymous tip, the Seattle Police Department
early this morning raided a Russian freighter in Seattle harbor. In cargo containers
in the ship's hold, officers located more than fifty children, aged six to fourteen,
who are believed to be the children who had fallen victim to the surge of kidnappings
that have plagued the Pacific Northwest over the past months. We go now live
to our reporter Betsy McDonald at the scene. Betsy?"

"Thank you, John. Here
with me now is Detective Simon Ingram of the Seattle PD. Detective, what can
you tell us about this whole affair?"

"Well, Betsy, like it
was said earlier, we reacted to an anonymous phone call about this freighter,
sending a couple of patrol cars to investigate. The officers first on the scene
looked the place over, and then called for backup."

"And what did they find,
specifically?"

"In total, fifty-four
children, aged six to fourteen, hidden in standard cargo containers in the ship's
hold. Under appalling conditions, I might add. The children have been taken
to various hospitals in the area for treatment. They were in pretty bad shape.
Aside from that, we discovered sixteen Russian nationals, the ship's crew, spread
all around the ship, in various states of wounding, tied up with police-issue
plastic handcuffs."

"And what was it you
told me about a... 'Demon'?"

"Well, Betsy, it was
sort of strange. A couple of them were babbling incoherently about a 'Demon
Woman' who had come back from the dead to destroy them for their sins. They
said she'd told them to confess everything to us, or else she find them and
kill them. Very strange."

Xena turned off the TV, plunging
the room back into darkness. She took a long pull of her beer bottle, and thought,
If I had been a demon, they would have needed sixteen body bags on that ship.

Then... a voice from far,
far away spoke to her. "Never a demon, my Xena, never a demon."

Lifting her bottle in salute
to the voice, Xena replied, out loud, "Only because of you, Gabrielle."

Finis
January 30th, 1999

Final Note: I set out to write this story thinking about the worst crime
I could come up with: the mistreatment of children. Some pedophiles claim protection
from punishment for their crimes because they say they're mentally ill, hoping
for treatment sentences instead of imprisonment. A lot of serial killers are
sick too, but that doesn't make them any less criminal. Oh, and the fact that
I made the villains of this story Russians shouldn't be misconstrued as me saying
that this crime only happens among foreigners. It's everywhere...